About the Atlas

Biochar resources at your fingertips.

The Biochar Atlas is a national digital platform under development by the American Biochar Institute, a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to deliver independent, science-based information, technical assistance, and standards on biochar to support broader adoption in agriculture, industry, and the built environment.

Why a National Atlas

Biochar has crossed the threshold from research curiosity to working soil amendment with measurable agronomic and climate benefits — but adoption is held back by fragmented information, inconsistent supplier data, and a lack of decision-support tools that meet farmers, NRCS staff, and agronomists where they work.

The Atlas closes that gap. It builds on the Pacific Northwest Biochar Atlas (developed by USDA ARS, with ~30,000 users to date) and expands it for national use with substantially improved usability, broader functionality, and a public core that is owned by ABI and free to users.

Phased delivery

Phase 1 (this work) ships the Biochar Suitability Tool — the highest-leverage entry point for the audiences ABI most cares about, especially NRCS staff who use Conservation Practice Standard 336.

Subsequent phases add the Sourcing Module, Learning Center, NRCS Implementation Module, and Deployment Database — all under the Atlas umbrella, with shared data, design, and infrastructure.

Collaborators

The Atlas is being developed in collaboration with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. ABI and ARS lead on the scientific aspects — algorithms, suitability logic, and technical oversight. The selected technology contractor (this proposal's submitter) translates that science into a high-quality, maintainable public tool.

Funding

Phase 1 is supported by a federal award from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. Procurement is conducted under 2 CFR 200.320(a)(2).

A proposal you can click.

This site was built in response to ABI's April 2026 RFP for a Biochar Suitability Tool, the first phase of the Atlas. We chose to submit not just a written proposal but a working concept — a real, interactive, deployable build of what we believe Phase 1 can look like. Every aspect of the prototype, from the SSURGO data integration to the printable NRCS-ready report, is meant as a concrete demonstration of how we'd partner with ABI and ARS.

Open the tool Methodology